"Actor: Rosalind Ivan"

• Carry On Teacher | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £6.66   |  Saving you £10.33 (155.11%)   |  RRP £16.99

  When Carry On Teacher was released in 1959, the series was still in its infancy but all the familiar constituent parts were already in place. Innuendo, naturally, reigns supreme and on the brink of the permissive 1960s it's surprising what Peter Rodgers and the gang were able to get away with. "Are you satisfied with your equipment, Miss Allcock?", child psychologist Leslie Phillips asks gym mistress Joan Sims. Naturally, it isn't five minutes before Miss Allcock's shorts have split, leading to a series of pants gags. And we're off. For Carry On fans, Teacher contains many of the funniest lines and certainly some of the best performances from the whole series. Kenneth Williams is still acting rather than giving his mannerisms a good work out. Hattie Jacques is establishing her gorgon-with-a-soft-centre-for-the-right-man persona and Charles Hawtrey's birdlike twitching makes him ideal as the precious music teacher. A youthful Carol White and Richard O'Sullivan are among the scheming pupils. But you don't have to be a diehard Carry On fan to appreciate the boisterous, sub-St Trinians comedy. And thanks to Ted Ray's poignant acting as the headmaster, there's a real moment of Mr Chips-style bathos at the very end. On the DVD: Carry On Teacher doesn't gain much from being presented in widescreen. Much of its appeal lies in its familiarity. All we ask for is a clear print--and in black and white this is diamond sharp--and decent sound quality. The whole thing fits like a comfortable old shoe. But apart from the scene index there are no extras on the disc. Given the cult status of the Carry On films, and the wealth of documentary material which has been made about them and their stars, you'd think something extra could have been offered with the DVD releases to make them a more worthwhile alternative to the video. --Piers Ford

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (06/11/2006) from £12.63   |  Saving you £-7.64 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In a way, Scarlet Street is a remake. It's taken from a French novel, La Chienne (literally, "The Bitch") that was first filmed by Jean Renoir in 1931. Renoir brought to the sordid tale all the colour and vitality of Montmartre; Fritz Lang's version shows us a far harsher and bleaker world. The film replays the triangle set-up from Lang's previous picture, The Woman in the Window, with the same three actors. Once again, Edward G Robinson plays a respectable middle-aged citizen snared by the charms of Joan Bennett's streetwalker, with Dan Duryea as her low-life pimp. But this time around, all three characters have moved several notches down the ethical scale. Robinson, who in the earlier film played a college professor who kills by accident, here becomes a downtrodden clerk with a nagging, shrewish wife and unfilled ambitions as an artist, a man who murders in a jealous rage. Bennett is a mercenary vamp, none too bright, and Duryea brutal and heartless. The plot closes around the three of them like a steel trap. This is Lang at his most dispassionate. Scarlet Street is a tour de force of noir filmmaking, brilliant but ice-cold. When it was made the film hit censorship problems, since at the time it was unacceptable to show a murder going unpunished. Lang went out of his way to show the killer plunged into the mental hell of his own guilt, but for some authorities this still wasn't enough, and the film was banned in New York State for being "immoral, indecent and corrupt". Not that this did its box-office returns any harm at all. On the DVD: sparse pickings. There's an interactive menu that zips past too fast to be of much use. The full-length commentary by Russell Cawthorne adds the occasional insight, but it's repetitive and not always reliable. (He gets actors' names wrong, for a start.) The box claims the print's been "fully restored and digitally remastered", but you'd never guess. --Philip Kemp

• Sherlock Holmes | DVD | (26/03/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Secret Weapon (Dir. Roy William Neill 1942): The inventor of a secret weapon and its prototype are abducted leaving the wartime Allies in dire need of assistance. Sherlock Holmes is called and begins to do battle with Professor Moriarty who will later become his arch-enemy... Dressed To Kill (Dir. Roy William Neill 1946): A beautiful woman and her gang of criminals attempt to match their wits with Sherlock Holmes in this murder/mystery set in Dartmoor and London

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  In a way, Scarlet Street is a remake. It's taken from a French novel, La Chienne (literally, "The Bitch") that was first filmed by Jean Renoir in 1931. Renoir brought to the sordid tale all the colour and vitality of Montmartre; Fritz Lang's version shows us a far harsher and bleaker world. The film replays the triangle set-up from Lang's previous picture, The Woman in the Window, with the same three actors. Once again, Edward G Robinson plays a respectable middle-aged citizen snared by the charms of Joan Bennett's streetwalker, with Dan Duryea as her low-life pimp. But this time around, all three characters have moved several notches down the ethical scale. Robinson, who in the earlier film played a college professor who kills by accident, here becomes a downtrodden clerk with a nagging, shrewish wife and unfilled ambitions as an artist, a man who murders in a jealous rage. Bennett is a mercenary vamp, none too bright, and Duryea brutal and heartless. The plot closes around the three of them like a steel trap. This is Lang at his most dispassionate. Scarlet Street is a tour de force of noir filmmaking, brilliant but ice-cold. When it was made the film hit censorship problems, since at the time it was unacceptable to show a murder going unpunished. Lang went out of his way to show the killer plunged into the mental hell of his own guilt, but for some authorities this still wasn't enough, and the film was banned in New York State for being "immoral, indecent and corrupt". Not that this did its box-office returns any harm at all. On the DVD: sparse pickings. There's an interactive menu that zips past too fast to be of much use. The full-length commentary by Russell Cawthorne adds the occasional insight, but it's repetitive and not always reliable. (He gets actors' names wrong, for a start.) The box claims the print's been "fully restored and digitally remastered", but you'd never guess. --Philip Kemp